Goodbye British constitution

Well that’s it then. Goodbye, British constitution. It was lovely while it lasted…

The British constitution is now on the ropes. Parliament has set itself against the people; MPs have paralysed government by arrogating its powers to themselves, aided by a partisan Speaker, while refusing to enable the proper remedy for any alleged loss of trust in government by allowing the people to decide in a general election.

The Supreme Court made no mention of this truly appropriate constitutional remedy. Instead, it trampled down the delicate membrane setting the judiciary apart from the political process, an essential component of English liberty and Britain’s once uniquely effective democracy.

Some of us warned that the creation of the Supreme Court in 2009 in place of the Law Lords would lead to the politicisation of the judiciary. An enormous step in that direction was taken today, when the Supreme Court inserted itself into not just the most contentious political decision in living memory but even into the relationship between the prime minster and the Queen – all the while protesting disingenuously that all they were doing was upholding the law. Stand by for escalating calls for judges to be appointed through a political vetting process, and maybe also calls for a written constitution.

Whatever the niceties of these legal arguments, today’s Supreme Court ruling will be seen by the millions who voted Brexit in a quite different and more straightforward way. They will see it as the judges ganging up with Remainer MPs, who are betraying the manifesto promise to honour the referendum result on which they were all elected by busily ripping up parliament’s rules and the constitutional balance between government and MPs, in order to give these rogue parliamentarians more opportunity to subvert the constitution, effectively hold the prime minister hostage and thus thwart the democratic will of the people – an exercise to which the 11 justices of the Supreme Court have now supplied rocket fuel.